Navy’s basketball players had a spring in their step during pre-game warmups on Saturday afternoon. The Midshipmen were smiling, laughing and joking throughout shoot-around while forward Tom Lacey fired up his teammates by throwing down a reverse two-handed dunk during layup drills.

The Mids have every reason to be loose these days as they have been playing a terrific brand of basketball. Positive contributions are coming from everywhere and the overall chemistry is off the charts right now.

Junior swingman Shawn Anderson had a strong all-around game with 15 points, six steals and sis assists Navy continued its hot streak by manhandling Holy Cross, 60-47, on Saturday afternoon before a boisterous audience of 2,278 at Alumni Hall. Sophomore point guard Hasan Abdullah contributed 10 points and four assists for the Midshipmen, whose seven-game winning streak within the Patriot League is their longest in 16 years.

Anderson didn’t hesitate when asked if the Mids are enjoying themselves at the moment.

“Absolutely. That’s the way it should be. It should be about the experience, and that’s what a lot of guys are figuring out right now,” the team’s leading scorer said. “We’re just going out and having fun and just playing loose.”

Junior guard Bryce Dulin chipped in 10 points while Lacey continued his dominance on the backboards with 15 rebounds for Navy (12-10, 7-3), which led from start to finish to stay in second place in the Patriot League. Senior center Edward Alade turned in another workmanlike effort with seven points and five rebounds for the Mids, whose aggressive defense harassed the Crusaders into 34 percent field goal shooting and 19 turnovers.

“I thought we had a great defensive effort tonight. We did a lot of really good things defensively,” Navy head coach Ed DeChellis said.

Seven marks the most consecutive conference victories for Navy since it strung together 12 straight over the course of the 2000 and 2001 seasons. Pretty impressive considering the Mids opened the conference campaign 0-3.

For the second time in as many meetings this season, a defensive stand in the game's waning seconds gave the Navy women's basketball team a narrow victory over Holy Cross on Saturday. The Mids (15-5, 8-1 Patriot League) edged the Crusaders (5-15, 3-6), 73-71, at the Hart Center in Worcester, Mass.

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“I’m proud considering where we started. We were a fragile team. I look back on it, you lose three in a row and Colgate is coming here on a Sunday afternoon. You hate to tell your guys this is a must win, but it really was a must win,” DeChellis said. “We win that game and we’re able to take a deep breath and relax a little bit. From there, we’ve gone on to play pretty good basketball. So I am really proud of our kids.”

Sophomore guard Patrick Benzan scored 12 points to lead Holy Cross (11-12, 5-5), which trailed by as much as 19 points midway through the second half. Senior forward Malachi Alexander added 11 points while senior guard Anthony Thompson had 10 for the Crusaders, who were limited to their lowest point total in Patriot League play this season.

“I thought Navy came out today and was the more aggressive team,” Holy Cross head coach Bill Carmody said. “We struggled the whole way. We’ll probably have to change some things around on offense because they exposed us a little bit.”

Lacey has been relentlessly pounding the glass of late, grabbing double-digit rebounds in three straight games. The 6-foot-7, 235-pounder, who also had 15 boards against American on Wednesday night, is the first Navy player to accomplish that feat since Laramie Mergerson in 2004.

“Tom is the man. If you’re going to war, you want to take Tom Lacey with you. He is just killing people on the boards,” Anderson said.

It wasn’t the best performance for the Navy offense, which shot just 34 percent from the field in the second half and finished with 19 turnovers. The Mids came in averaging 79 points over the previous six contests.

“Offensively, we were out of sync. This is the most turnovers we’ve had in a long, long time,” DeChellis said. “I’m a little disappointed with the way we took care of the ball. We threw the ball away carelessly at times. We didn’t play our best game and we found a way to win. I’ll take that.”

Dulin scored all nine of his points on 3-pointers as Navy took a 33-24 lead into halftime. Anderson and Abdullah added eight and seven points for the Mids, who shot 56.5 percent (13-for-23) from the field in the first half.

After a slow start to the second half, Anderson drilled a 3-pointer and followed with a driving layup to get Navy going. Sophomore forward George Kiernan followed with a long trey as the Mids moved ahead by 15 points. Holy Cross struggled mightily to start the second half, managing just seven points over a span of 11 ½ minutes in watching Navy take a commanding 50-31 lead.

“We’re just sticking to the process. Coach D has a game-plan. He tells us what to do, we come in and work hard in practice. When it comes to the game, we execute and bring energy,” Anderson said. “We’ve really matured a lot. If you look at the start of the game, we had five or six turnovers. You saw us gradually gather ourselves, slow down and start executing our offense. At the beginning of the year, we probably get blown out in this game. I’m really proud of the way guys have grown up. We showed a lot of growth in this game.”

Navy now embarks on its most extended road trip of the Patriot League season, playing at Boston University on Thursday and Colgate on Saturday.